Reader Grania Spingies, one of the founders of Atheist Ireland, has kindly consented to write about the blasphemy law that is still on the books in Ireland.
How to Make a Mess of Modernity
by Grania Spingies
Ireland should soon be having a referendum on whether to remove blasphemy as a criminal offence from the statute books. A lot of countries have a few strange old laws that haven’t been used in years, but are still on the books because no government has ever thought to remove them. What makes Ireland a little different is that the blasphemy law in its current form came into effect only in in 2009 in a blur of muddle-headed thinking.
The law is a source of both bemusement and merriment here, as it is in practice unenforceable as written. But the law is also an embarrassment as well as a potential danger. Michael Nugent, chair of Atheist Ireland summed it up succinctly:
“Islamic states at the UN have been citing Ireland’s blasphemy law as evidence that modern European states have no problem with outlawing blasphemy just as Islamic states do. You know you are doing something wrong when Pakistan is citing you as best practice for blasphemy laws.”
That’s Pakistan where the death sentence for a Christian woman found guilty of insulting Mohammed under its blasphemy laws has just been upheld by its High Court.
Most people in Ireland probably do not support the idea blasphemy as a a crime, so with a bit of luck the people of Ireland will vote to have this misguided piece of legislation removed. However, Ireland has a strange history when it comes to legislators trying to appease the Catholic church while simultaneously trying to to enact the will of the people.
The current divorce law is a case in point. When people voted to overturn the ban on divorce in 1995 (yes, 1995) the subsequent law made it legal but laborious and difficult by slapping a four-year moratorium on anyone seeking a divorce.
An even worse mess has been created in the most recent attempt to redress the inhumane abortion ban in Ireland, in which a ham-fisted piece of legislation enacted to ostensibly allow for abortion in cases when it would save the life of a pregnant woman has been shown to be brutal and ineffective even in the most desperate of cases. Women who are raped or have fetuses with fatal abnormalities are still required to remain pregnant or leave the country. Women who are suicidal as a result have to prove to a panel of doctors that they are suicidal enough.
The common theme here is this: the Catholic church opposes abortion under any circumstance.
In recent years, attempts have also been made to redress the bizarre situation in Ireland in which the overwhelming majority of schools are Catholic despite being financed by the tax payer. Needless to say, the Church opposes this as well, and issues statements explaining why secularisation of schools must be resisted:
“Since religion deals with matters of fundamental, ultimate concern it follows that the religious response has a priority in all one’s subsequent reasoning and deliberation.”
In case you think the speaker might be defending all religion, he is not: “To equate all religions is, in a real sense, to empty them of any significance.”
Similar solemn and dire warnings have recently been uttered about the potential excising of blasphemy from the Irish Constitution:
“When law enters the arena of morality, it nearly always runs into difficulties … How far can sexual behaviour or same sex marriage or blasphemy or the right of women for personal autonomy be dealt with by the law, except in the limited sense of protecting the vulnerable?”
I regret I can’t afford refunds for any irony meters that have just exploded.
Unfortunately, Irish politicians seem to be cowed by this sort of talk, perhaps because 84% of the population still call themselves Catholic. However, it is a fact almost universally acknowledged that very few Irish Catholics are truly Catholic these days.
Irish blogger Robert Nielson has painstakingly analysed a number or surveys and polls to show just how un-Catholic the average Irish Catholic is today. His findings are very interesting. Certainly very few Irish Catholics pay any attention to the Church’s teaching on sexuality (only 25%), and significant numbers don’t believe in Hell, sin, heaven, life after death or even God. An amazing 62% don’t believe in transubstantiation—or presumably know that they are in fact required to believe it. The most important figure for our purposes is that only 17% say that they would follow the Church’s teaching when making decisions.
So legislators and politicians who cringe at the thought of offending the Church, and by proxy the voters, are in effect flinching at ghosts and shadows. And every flinch costs the Irish people dearly in terms of human rights abuses.
In Ireland the people continue to move towards a more liberal and secular society. In remains to be seen how long it will take to convince timorous politicians to move along with them.
~
Ireland is a living example of the fact that if the Christian church could seize control of a modern western country, they would. Their dedication to enlightenment values is about a millimeter deep. What prevents them from destroying the enlightenment is not some ideological acceptance of it, but the fact that they have less guns than their opponents.
That’s an excellent point.
Well said!
Very good post. Very, very interested in seeing the numbers on transubstantiation, a good litmus test to separate true Catholics from cultural Catholics. James Joyce, early in Ulysses, has Stephen Dedalus complain that he, like all the Irish, are subject to two masters, one of which is the British, the second is the “holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.” Things are changins, slowly. All the best in bringing about a more secular Ireland, Grania.
But there may well be folks who believe all the reprehensible stuff about women, sexuality, etc. and yet don’t buy the transubstantiation stuff.
Yes. Very true. Maybe you see the chalice as half empty and I see it as half full. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) I take encouragement from Graina’s low numbers. Skepticism about some of religion’s more easily examined supernatural claims is a good first step toward forming a more rational viewpoint on all things.
I agree, if the rejection of t. is done rationally one can use it as a “conversation starter”, at least.
Transubstantiation isn’t a good litmus test. Years ago I recall reading commentary by Catholic clergy bemoaning the fact that even the devoted, observant Catholic laity is nearly the same as non-Catholics in thinking that the official position of the Catholic church is that the ‘body and blood of Christ’ stuff is metaphorical.
sub
Father Michael Drumm says “To equate all religions is, in a real sense, to empty them of any significance.”
Agreed, sir. And Roman Catholicism is somewhat lower in my estimation than other religions I could name.
The notion that religion deals with matters of “ultimate concern” was first formulated in those words by a fellow who meant to imply one should be severely critical of creedal religion in general, Paul “Ground of Being” Tillich. IN this context, Tillich writes critically of “faith [that] has become static, a nonquestioning surrender.”
His words have now been hijacked for a sectarian cause that he would have regarded as wrong. I’m tempted to quip that Fr. Drumm has “transubstantiated” Tillich’s words into meaning something opposite of what he intended.
Yes; it’s philosophy which “deals with matters of ultimate concern” — which Tillich no doubt knew but chose to fudge anyway. Religion is that branch of philosophy which deals with honest questions by promoting implausible truths for epistemically inept reasons while truncating the critical inquiry and challenge which philosophy grows on. So yes, if you’re at a philosophical dead end and dishonest about it you’re very likely to be in favor of ‘blasphemy’ laws.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised that I take exception to that.
Philosophy is ostensibly in part a quest to understand the ultimate nature of reality, but it’s a cheap joke compared with what’s going on at CERN and NASA. What philosopher even hinted at the mass of the Higgs, or the range of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background?
Philosophy is also supposed to be the ultimate authority on matters of morality; yet, where science has given us the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, philosophy has us fantasizing about shoving fat men off bridges in order to derail trains.
And philosophy is ultimately alleged to be the quest to understand knowledge itself…but Alan Turing and Claude Shannon alone each did far more in their short (too short in Turing’s case) lifetimes to advance that field than philosophy ever has even over the course of millennia. Hell, even Edgar Codd or Donald Knuth — people you’ve likely never heard of — can rightfully claim as much.
So, no. It’s not philosophy which deals with matters of ultimate concern.
It’s science.
Cheers,
b&
+ 1
(Of course.)
I like it that Knuth’s Wikipedia entry has a section for Humor.
He’s a real blast.
And those $2.56 checks are assuredly worth far more than a mere two hundred fifty-six pennies….
b&
At the risk of going off-topic for a moment, Wikipedia defines philosophy as:
“the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.[1][2] Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.[3] In more casual speech, by extension, “philosophy” can refer to “the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group”.[4]
The word “philosophy” comes from the Ancient Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), which literally means “love of wisdom”.[5][6][7] The introduction of the terms “philosopher” and “philosophy” has been ascribed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras.[8]”
It’s not that I’m going to defend the excrescences that appear under philosophy’s name – apparently unregulated – but couldn’t a case be made that there are some things under the umbrella that are, at least in theory, separate from both the body of scientific knowledge and at least some principles of scientific method? Epistemology, logic and maths, ethics, aesthetics, and so on at least have genuine issues in them.
I know you favour the notion of science broadly construed, but wouldn’t a term like rational inquiry, rationalism, philosophonomy (to mimic the astrology-astronomy distinction), critical thinking, or reason be more comprehensive without getting into awkward cases?
The problem is that all the productive work in all the areas you identify is being done by means of rational analysis of objective observations, and all the bullshit coming out of those fields is coming from people wearing philosopher’s hats.
We only know of one reliable way to understand the world: to make mental models of it and then refine those models against reality itself. Philosophy still thinks that there’s no real need to go to the bother of checking your model against the original — and, as soon as you do carry out that step, you’re no longer doing pure philosophy but rather science.
b&
But what about mathematics, logic, and especially ethics? The former two run on strict rules that, while applicable to empiricism, aren’t reliant on them. The latter ropes in the topic of value, which most would agree are discussed differently from observable facts. These might be better encapsulated by one of the terms I mentioned.
The former two are well known to produce results that don’t model the real world. Euclidean geometry, for example, is a wonderfully useful tool, but it’s never better than an approximation and in no way an accurate model of reality.
Ethics must be heavily grounded in empiricism. How else are you to know, for example, what does and doesn’t constitute adequate informed consent for medical patients? Is it enough to slip another sheet of paper for the patient to sign in the middle of the inch-thick stack, or do you need to have the doctor tell the patient? And is it okay for the patient to smile and nod in reverse, or do you need to get the patient to repeat back in her own words what she’s consenting to?
Cheers,
b&
Oh come on, Ben, you know I was referring to the ability of Mathematics and Logic to yield proofs without being compelled to verify them empirically. Euclidean geometry may have little to no application, but it yields equations that will always produce correct answers whatever numbers you put in. You’re being too concrete in your thinking here. You don’t even have to go as far as geometry: 1+n=36 doesn’t require you to grab some marbles to figure out the answer. You know through sheer logical reasoning that n=35. That’s why I’d prefer to encompass maths and logic with science under the larger category of reason. That also nicely cuts away any philosophy that disgraces the field.
As for ethics, I meant values, not checking facts about consent and so on: normative and meta-ethical stuff. Most people claim they’re not the same thing. Even an ethical naturalist would at least concede that values are too abstract to be immediately solved by just testing reality, since a large part of the deal involves human negotiation and strategies in societies that have to navigate a social minefield of issues. Again, more neatly captured under the reason label, as reason contains these highly abstract outgrowths that don’t readily submit to empiricism.
I mean, granted, I think values are no more mysterious than other abstractions like evolution and computer code, but not everyone would be convinced that calling it science was not doing violence to the term “science” in some way.
Actually…no, it does.
The reason basic arithmetic seems so intuitively obvious is because that’s the way the Universe we find ourselves in works. But if we found ourselves in an Universe in which, every time you picked one apple from the tree you wound up with two in your hand, or in which you always needed to pick two apples to get one in your hand, that sort of arithmetic would be intuitively obvious, and the kind we’re used to would be bizarre bordering on incomprehensible.
And, no, I’m not being obtuse for no good reason. The before and after of Newtonian Mechanics is a perfect example. Suggesting that things keep moving on them unless you do something to stop them was as bizarre to the pre-Newton mind as suggesting that you could pick one apple and wind up with an entire basketful. But in our post-Newton world, the suggestion that you have to keep pushing on something just to keep it from stopping makes as much sense as an assertion that you have to pick dozens of apples just to get a single one in your basket.
Plus, it would be trivial to devise a computer model world in which arithmetic worked in whatever manner you might wish to imagine, including even Calvinball. In any of those model worlds, the arithmetic you and I are used to would be the same sort of idle curiosity as the various esoteric non-Euclidean geometries.
Save for superbly perverse pathologies, any value you might have hinges on you being alive to bring whatever you value to fruition. And survival is much more likely with the help of a cooperative society. Pretty much everything else, down to helping your little old lady neighbor with her groceries, follows inevitably from the simple fact that your chances are better when you work with society rather than against it, and that healthy societies provide greater opportunities for their members than sick and twisted ones.
Cheers,
b&
“Actually…no, it does.
“The reason basic arithmetic seems so intuitively obvious is because that’s the way the Universe we find ourselves in works. But if we found ourselves in an Universe in which, every time you picked one apple from the tree you wound up with two in your hand, or in which you always needed to pick two apples to get one in your hand, that sort of arithmetic would be intuitively obvious, and the kind we’re used to would be bizarre bordering on incomprehensible.”
I won’t call you obtuse, but I hope you appreciate where I’m coming from when I say I find this a little difficult to grasp. When you gave your example, I don’t see a radical new maths. I see a universe where apples suddenly pop into and out of existence, simply a more extravagant version of trying to count coins as someone snatches them from you and throws some at you. Surely, there are at least basic abstract assumptions the mind has to make (like the rules of valid and sound logic) before it can begin to perceive and understand the world?
Why?
Again, you’ve got it backwards.
A great argument could be made for the anthropic principle that we find ourselves in a comprehensible, regular Universe because chaotic incomprehensible ones wouldn’t be capable of evolving and supporting intelligent beings who could perceive it. But we’ve known at least for centuries that there are limitless ways to construct regular, self-consistent mathematical systems, including some bizarrely radical ones — and two of those just happen to be great ways of modeling our own Universe as large and small scales.
Your own counter-example: apples suddenly popping into and out of existence? That’s exactly what Quantum Mechanics is all about, particularly fluctuations in the vacuum. Hell, it’s likely even the origins of the Big Bang itself! And trying to count coins as somebody snatches them from you and throws some at you? A great example of the life of a particle physicist working at a relativistic accelerator.
And those’re just the more familiar examples from our own Universe!
So, yeah. If we have to deal with Heisenberg Uncertainty even in our own universe, who’re you to claim that Calvinball isn’t an equally mathematically valid system, simply one that’s not particularly useful to apply at human scales?
Cheers,
b&
Darn, this is making my head spin a bit…
Are you saying that maths and logic are like other fields of science: hypothetically could contain anything, but in practice are limited by what we actually find?
But don’t maths and logic accept proofs that would apply in any and all systems, like the Law of Non-Contradiction?
And I don’t think I conveyed my point across last comment. I meant that, if you find yourself in a universe in which you have to pick a basket’s worth of apples just to end up with one, I disagree that somehow six apples from one tree plus six apples from another makes two apples, or 6a+6a=2a. That would be self-contradictory. 6a+6a=12a and 1a+1a=2a. It’s just that, over time, the numbers of apples change, so you have to take that into account, say as 6a+6a-5a-5a=2a.
I’m not saying the application of maths to reality must be the same in every universe: go ahead and have a universe where an obscure and theoretical branch here has a practical use there, and vice versa. But if you’re finding 1+1=6, it just strikes me as less a reason to radicalize the maths and more a reason to check your not missing something out in the first place.
When we count money from the till and find we’re £5.00 short, we simply assume something happened to the £5.00, whether someone burgled it, or the manager simply imagined it and miscounted the money the first time. We don’t cry out “Hail the new maths!” because maths doesn’t work like that.
Good! It should. It did mine at first, too.
Exactly.
Look at all the scientific theories over the ages that were elegant but simply didn’t fit reality. Geocentricism, heliocentricism with perfectly circular orbits, epicycles…all wonderfully internally self-consistent and superficially quite enticing. The Luminiferous Aether, too, and all the early models of the atom.
And not a one of them is any way real, despite their aesthetic appeal and even, in some cases, their limited utility.
The law of non-contradiction itself doesn’t really apply to most of quantum mechanics. Consider particles in superposition, or Schrödinger’s poor cat; hard to get more contradictory than both alive and dead! A quantum married bachelor wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, either.
Would an hypothetical intelligent agent in a radically different universe be able to construct the mathematical system we consider intuitive? Possibly. But why ours as opposed to the infinite variety of other mathematical systems? One thing’s for sure, this agent wouldn’t consider the arithmetic addition function to be fundamental the way we do; rather, it would be an idle curiosity.
No. Our universe doesn’t work like that — at least, not at macro scales. It’s an empirically-verifiable fact. But I’ve already offered you plenty of examples from our very own universe which do act like that, and physicists who probe reality at those scales struggle mightily to abandon the there-uselessly-incorrect notion that 1 + 1 = 2 and instead attempt to build new intuitions for the way things really do work at those scales.
If you were operating a quantum cash register or a relativistic one, you wouldn’t get suspicious when you found you were $8 (at today’s exchange rates) short; you’d get suspicious when you weren’t $8 short.
Cheers,
b&
Apologies for tense errors. Corrections:
The former two run on strict rules that, while applicable to empiricism, aren’t reliant on it. The latter ropes in the topic of value, which most would agree is discussed differently from observable facts.
IMO there are two senses of philosophy, Wikipedia’s sense # 1, and all the rest of it. The strict sense, mostly def. #1 above, I think of as capital-P Philosophy, i.e., all the stuff on the so-labeled shelf in the library…stuff that is generally so abstruse, jargon-full, & convoluted that most of us can’t figure out what they’re getting on about. And as a field it seems full of people from classical times to the present arriving at significantly different opinions, relying on persuasion to prevail.
Lower-case philosophy is something that can and should be (and often is) done by everyone, and one hopes via the use of critical thinking, rational analysis, etc. (part of def.# 2 above). When the matters in question affect more than just one’s individual life, people come together to thrash out positions and then actions, without the obscurantism. (A process that can mostly be subsumed into Ben’s “science broadly construed.)
And I’m sure you won’t be surprised that I take exception to you dividing off science from philosophy. Empiricism and rationalism are philosophical positions. Presumably data needs to be interpreted and placed in larger context — such as “theories.” As I use it, science is a sub-category of philosophy.
When it comes to understanding the nature of reality, philosophy without science is lame. Science without philosophy, however, is sitting in a granite pit and counting up all the pretty rocks.
Philosophy taking credit for science is like astrology taking credit for astronomy. Sure, the one grew out of the other, but in so doing made the other obsolete to the point of embarrassment. More to the point, science has left philosophy so far behind that nothing remains of the original. You could trivially rebuild science based on scientific principles without any need to refer back to philosophy…but philosophy is just as likely to reinvent theology as it is anything else. And, if philosophy ever did reinvent science, there, again, would be no more need for philosophy.
b&
We’re using terms to in different ways. I think I’m being more technical than you are.
You might enjoy this. Philosopher Rebecca Goldstein got the Richard Dawkins Award this year; she’s also married to Steven Pinker and they’re in sweet accord on science. She wrote this book to answer your criticisms.
Well, not to you, personally.
It comes down to what you use as the reference standard.
In science, it’s always observation. Either your conclusions are consistent with observations (to within some margin of error) or it’s back to the drawing board.
In philosophy, “elegance” or some other aesthetic standard is fully capable of trumping observation. And, in those branches of philosophy where observation is king…they’re just doing science while wearing hats with the word, “philosopher,” scrawled across them.
b&
I was rather taken with this quote that appeared on someone’s bl*g recently:
“Theology and philosophy are ways of employing otherwise unemployable, over-educated but useless and incompetent lack-wits who are basically too harmless to be criminals and too lacking in any other skill to do a real job.”
Then what do you make of me, someone with advanced degrees in philosophy and logic, working as an integration programmer and such? 😉
But really – the argument is actually: where is the dividing line? Yes, science-and-technology hostile philosophy is worse than useless. But stuff that shades into general science? Where’s the boundary?
(I studied events for my MA paper. Why? Because they are scientifically important and the literature was pre1905. Rather than dismiss the study, why not update it? I did, to the extent that I could- no GR, but …)
Very good article by Grania.
Sure religion “deals with matters of ultimate concern”, in the sense that different religions have different opinions on them. (And in as much as philosophy participates, re Sastra, it too offer opinion naturally.)
But what we know they don’t do is to deal with the facts of nature. So if it is GoB Tillich who originated it, we can add another problem for his gob of the non-existent gap.
Thanks, Grania.
Yes indeed: eloquently and clearly expressed.
“Ditto.”
b&
“Dit-two”
Dit-three! Great work Grania.
When I think of Ireland I’m always reminded of what Hitchens wrote about Mother Teresa and her going there to lobby in opposition to divorce at the time of the referendum.
I also remember the priest who murdered on behalf of the IRA, but then was simply shuffled off to a parish on the west coast because it wouldn’t be good for the Church to prosecute him.
And the c. 200 remains of babies buried near a Catholic “home” for unwed mothers.
The Catholic Church has been damaging the people of a wonderful country for centuries, although many still believe St Patrick is the reason there aren’t any snakes there. The Church is the snake.
Again, great article Grania!
“For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.”
I’d amend Chesterton:
Ignore the deeds and click the beads,
Faith, look the other way.
The women had it coming,
It’s why they die today.
““When law enters the arena of morality, it nearly always runs into difficulties … ”
Seems to me most law is about morality–it’s wrong to steal, it’s wrong to lie, it’s wrong to murder…but what do I know?
Well-written, eye-opening article, Grania, thanks for it. And I always enjoy* following your links.
*If that’s the word for it, given the subject matter. Let’s just say they’re always interesting and often result in much surfing from one page to another.
Yes, that’s a problem: “morality” is a deepity, or at least a word with 2 different meanings, often conflated. Sometimes it refers to “the practice of ethics” and will broadly include murder and theft. Other times it is limited to personal, private, or religious virtues which won’t apply to everyone, like bowing towards Mecca when you pray.
Grania obviously means the latter — but isn’t the Catholic Church hoping to ride in to respectability on the former?
You’re not implying the RRC is duplicitous, surely? 😉
Of course, the part I quoted was also quoted by Grania, to wit:
Pierpoint, there, epitomizing your last sentence.
Yes indeed, never fiddle with constitutional tradition, esp. when the law in question dates all the way back to 2009.
*RCC*
Right. RCC is “Ridiculous Roman Catholics.”
LOL. (Don’t worry, I read it the intended way the first time…Gotta love non-editable WP. Do we have an eyeroll smiley?)
Most secular countries’ laws are about what is legal rather than what is moral. Morality as we know is a rather subjective concept, and many legal systems are reasonably clear that something being immoral (at least to some) does not make it necessarily illegal: take for example adultery which many modern states and countries do not regard as a relevant even in a divorce case.
As to what the good Archdeacon meant when he made his statement, he probably thought it sounded good. As an argument about blasphemy clauses in Constitutions it is a bit of a double-edged sword: states should not legislate about what speech is “moral” at all, and so it is an excellent reason for removing all traces of this law completely.
As Sastra says, he is trying to blur the two together so that he can claim that the Church’s former thumbprints all over the Constitution should be allowed to remain while at the same time claiming that the Church is not interfering in State matters.
Well yes, of course. But the law we do have–“what is legal”–seems to me to be ultimately rationalized on the basis of moral precepts…one of which would be the concept of justice.
Absolutely, many if not most of the Church’s “morality” concerns are dubious at best, which is why secular law is so superior. (Not that I can’t find a million things wrong with it, too, but that’s another subject…)
All too often my quips only make sense to me…
We can’t all be a Rudyard Quipling…
Aw, man, that’s great! 😀 I’m so stealing it.
But saying laws are about what’s legal is just tautological.
I agree with Diane. Laws are meant to establish a baseline morality: these things are illegal; you may not do these things (because they are wrong, ie, immoral, for various reasons I needn’t get into here).
I beg to disagree with both of you. The difference between illegal and immoral may seem an all too subtle one, but it is an important one. There are plenty of things that may not be moral but you may be very uncomfortable with being made illegal – like blasphemy or adultery. And conversely, there are things that may be very moral and yet you may not feel a state should make it a legal requirement such as choosing to die to save someone else. Of course there is an overlap between the two concepts, but a society that cannot tell the difference between the two usually looks like a theocracy, if you see what I mean.
I agree with your second formulation: there certainly are actions that could be considered morally good that shouldn’t be enshrined in or enforced by law.
I don’t entirely agree with your first formulation. If something can be considered morally wrong by everybody, then I don’t see why it shouldn’t also be illegal. The thing about blasphemy and adultery is that cases can be made to show that they are not immoral.
This is why I wrote that laws are about establishing a *baseline* morality. Can we go above and beyond? Sure. But to consider ourselves well-behaved citizens, we need to, at the very least, obey the law – assuming the laws are good and appropriate.
Determining the “goodness” or “appropriateness” of a given law is a different sticky wicket.
Personally I agree that neither of those is necessarily immoral, although I can also see why they can be regarded as potentially harmful. However, my problem lies with your statement that if something is considered immoral by everyone, then it should also be illegal. It’s just too blunt a statement. What about lying? Lying is pretty much condemned universally, but even leaving aside the lying to the Nazis about the whereabouts of Anne Frank scenario, I think most people would readily agree that some lies should not be made illegal. There are always grades of an action, and grades of the harm that it does to individuals and society, and that’s often where the the line between what is immoral and what needs to be illegal tends to come from.
In any case, beyond some pretty basic stuff like theft, gratuitous violence, murder and the like; it starts to get very difficult to get a whole society to agree on what is or isn’t immoral. Countries that insist that there is a population-wide consensus on the immorality of something are all too often countries with a scant regard for human rights or their population’s actual thoughts on the subject.
It’s only blunt in the sense that it doesn’t mention a specific action or kind of action. I agree. Good legislation shouldn’t pro/prescribe anything based only on vague abstraction.
But to come at it from an “in principle” fashion, think of it this way: in our current system we have no problem outlawing actions that are considered wrong by only some of the governed. It seems to me this is even more blunt, that there is even more room for argument. If you want to argue, as a matter of principle, against outlawing actions that *everyone* considers wrong (as rare as those certainly must be), then you have to argue against outlawing actions only *some* people consider wrong, too. And then it seems to me that you’re left with not being able to outlaw anything.
I think the “bluntness” of my statement arises from the fact that I left unsaid all the *reasons* for everyone finding a given action immoral.
We can argue about what sorts of reasons for finding things immoral are compelling or not, but that would really be steering the discussion away from my original point that laws are indeed about establishing what sort of behavior is acceptable or not, which is morality. The fact that various groups might have behaviors they’d like to add or subtract from the legal list doesn’t mean the legal project can’t be described as one dealing with morality.
Actually, we do have laws against some lies–those dealing with perjury.
Some body of representatives deliberated and arrived at a category of lying that most would agree should be illegal.
Aha–law can even be nuanced. 🙂
+ 1 @ Musical Beef; and to all your previous posts in this discussion as well.
“if something is considered immoral by everyone, then it should also be illegal”.
I have a deep seated hunch that Ireland is a lot more prone to this type of thought than other European countries.
“a society that cannot tell the difference between the two usually looks like a theocracy”
“Countries that insist that there is a population-wide consensus on the immorality of something are all too often countries with a scant regard for human rights or their population’s actual thoughts on the subject”.
Hmm, these quotes fit post-independence Ireland rather well, and do nothing to unseat my hunch.
Thanks for an interesting post Grania!
I would argue differently.
Laws should have fuck-all to do with morality, and only function in the same basic way that traffic laws generally do: to ensure that, as you do as you damned well please, you don’t unduly jeopardize those around you without their consent.
Murder shouldn’t be illegal because of any moral principle, but because it causes more than a wee bit of inconvenience to the victim.
But, just as you’re free to drive as insanely fast as you want on private property with the consent of the property owners, you should be able to enlist the help of your physician (or somebody similar) to end your life in a dignified manner.
And, of course, it’s not at all unreasonable to have additional safeguards in place in either example as necessary to prevent abuse. But an absolute ban on either on some sort of “moral” grounds is reprehensible.
See also the ongoing war on some drugs, and especially the fact that we’re finally sobering up with respect to marijuana as we did so many decades with alcohol. Yes, keep drunk driving and similar laws on the books — but that’s just special cases of reckless endangerment. But, so long as you’re not putting anybody else at risk, what you do to yourself and / or with other consenting adults is nobody else’s business but your own.
(And also see also abortion and other similar hot-button “moral” topics.)
The laws should be about keeping us out of each other’s hair. When it’s the law itself getting in our hair, then you’ve really got a problem.
Cheers,
b&
I think you’re just arguing about how one should understand/define the term “morality”.
I don’t think morality has to be understood as a system of absolutes. You just have to avoid vague catchall terms like “murder”, or at least give “murder” a narrow enough definition so that things like euthanasia, assisted suicide, and self-defense are not included in the immoral category.
I would say that not causing “inconvenience” (harm) is the moral principle. The “traffic” of human interaction flows best when we avoid harm wherever it’s avoidable. I don’t see why the term “morality” can’t be given to the system that helps achieve that flow. If I were summarizing your system I’d say “this is Ben’s moral system”.
I don’t think the word implies anything absolute or religious. The thing about religious people and morality is that they imagine all sorts of harm where there is none, which is not a problem with the concept of morality.
Well, what law “should be” is a different subject than what law is. I suspect on the floor of Congress, “morality” arguments are more persuasive and thus more common than any from your POV.
(Which, on second glance could be seen as tilting dangerously toward libertarianism. But don’t worry, I can see how your premise can be extended to save the safety nets by arguing that increasing the well-being of the disenfranchised is actually better for everyone than ignoring them is.)
Completely agree with you, Beef. And I don’t think we should keep abandoning useful words lest someone think they’re religion-related.
I completely agree with you, Grania. I never meant to imply that law was an all-encompassing moral standard. Just that what Musical Beef calls “baseline morality” is what results in the set of laws that critically thinking people find a consensus for–usually based on what does or does not cause harm to another person. Ideally, anyway.
But really, I only intended to snipe a bit at Pierpoint, not open a “what is law” debate. Aaack!
Actually, perhaps that’s the source of any misunderstanding we might have here; I’m thinking of the question, “what is law,” while you & Sastra are looking at the larger picture of “what is morality.” (And how it is so subjective!)
take for example adultery which many modern states and countries do not regard as a relevant even in a divorce case.
Well…in the US it is certainly relevant to the civil side of the case. Adultery will be considered when deciding very important things like custody of minors, child support, alimony payments, etc… So I would say that “not regard as relevant” is incorrect in the US.
However you are right in that it is not a criminal law issue any more, at least in most places.
Laws on divorce in the United States vary greatly from state to state. Far as I know, there is no federal law is above and beyond the laws of the states.
The Catholic Church, retaining the accidents of a loving organization, but the essence of a totalitarian dictatorship.
It appears Ireland has a democracy, and the politicians aren’t doing what the majority want, so why don’t they elect some that do? I don’t mean this as a criticism, I’m wondering why democracy seems to fail in Ireland as it does in the USA. Here, in a typical election, more people don’t vote than vote for either candidate (and there’s usually no more than two viable candidates, which is another part of the problem).
Democracy tends to fail everywhere in this respect.
However once Saudi Arabia starts using you as an example for human rights I’d move away from that position as quickly as possible. Not good.
Irish people tend to vote in general elections according to their wallets rather than their consciences, and also there’s not a whole lot separating any of the main political parties. Smaller, ostensibly more radical, parties often get enough votes to become junior partners in a coalition government. And then they inevitably sell out to protect their positions and pensions. The Labour Party’s current attempts to sell water privitisation to the public is a good example.
Amusing historical sidelight: Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, was the last judge in the United States to jail someone for blasphemy (1838); Abner Kneeland served sixty days despite a petition for his pardon signed by Emerson and other prominent citizens. Later Shaw became father-in-law to Herman Melville.
It would be interesting to poll Americans to see how many would want blasphemy laws back on the books. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was disturbingly high in the South and bible belt.
It hasn’t been prosecuted since 1855. Is there a country anywhere that does not have laws, probably by the hundreds that are still on the books and ignored?
Well New Zealand for one still retains blasphemous libel as a crime. The one and only unsuccessful prosecutions seems to have been in 1922 in relation to the publication of the closing lines of Sassoon’s poem ‘Stand-to: Good Friday Morning’:
O Jesus, send me a wound to-day,
And I’ll believe in Your bread and wine,
And get my bloody old sins washed white!
The Attorney-General whose consent is needed to prosecute has refused consent in a few complaints in the last few decades including a South Park episode. It is a law that should have been repealed long ago.
Crimes Act s123 Blasphemous libel
(1) Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 1 year who publishes any blasphemous libel.
(2) Whether any particular published matter is or is not a blasphemous libel is a question of fact.
(3) It is not an offence against this section to express in good faith and in decent language, or to attempt to establish by arguments used in good faith and conveyed in decent language, any opinion whatever on any religious subject.
(4) No one shall be prosecuted for an offence against this section without the leave of the Attorney-General, who before giving leave may make such inquiries as he or she thinks fit.
Agreed that all silly laws should be repealed, but there are too many to deal with and gadflies who object.
If Congress tried to repeal superfluous laws nothing would get done… wait a minute… what would change?
New Zealand being an English colony inherited all England’s statutory law going back to 1066 or whatever but in 1988 repealed the lot except for specifically listed Acts. And about time as the longbow practice was mucking up my weekends.
I love New Zealand. Was there in 2010 and found everything impressive… the most impressive to me were two museums, the War Memorial, the Botanical garden across the way and the Auckland Museum.
Thank you Grania for a very fine guest post.
RE BLASPHEMY:
There should be no blasphemy laws, whether the blasphemy is written, spoken or otherwise conveyed. People should be free to write or say what they think without legal steps and punishment taken against them, particularly death sentences as in some countries.
RE ABORTION:
The status of abortion in Ireland is a crime against women. In the United States, a number of states are attempting to restrict a woman’s right to obtain a legal abortion. For example: Texas now has almost no legal abortion clinics because the state has applied such stringent laws that abortion clinics can’t exist. In Texas, women must either give birth whether she wants to or not, go out of state to obtain a safe abortion from a clinic, or try some of the older, frequently deadly forms of illegal abortion.
In addition, many hospitals in The United States are being purchased and run by the Catholic Church. How likely do you think it is that abortions will be performed in them for any reason, however dire the situation?
RE EDUCATION:
Under no circumstances should any one religion be responsible for so-called state-provided education financed by tax dollars. If parents want their children to receive a religious education, let the parents pay for it. Charter schools and home schooling are alternatives they can use that I’m not fond of, but are options. The more control Christians gain over school systems, the less science and rationality is taught.
RE REASONING AND DELIBERATION:
Education should be secular and well-rounded; not one-size fits all Catholicism. Morality in humans is innate and develops by observation of successful group behaviors, or by being taught. Morality and good group behavior is seen in animals other than humans without their ever having had the benefit of Catholic religion, Catholic education, or Catholic controlled laws.
How long before they close that loophole by restricting right of travel across a border “in order to perform actions which would be illegal in [insert name of state]”. There used to be such laws concerning under-age marriage and other such things, so I’d expect them to re-appear soon.
Barefoot, nekkid, pregnant, and still chained to the kitchen sink – the Texas legislature’s ideal woman. (Oh, and when are they going to re-introduce the property requirement for enfranchisement? “When”, not “if”.)
Great post, thank you.
‘surveys and polls to show just how un-Catholic the average Irish Catholic is today.’
Don’t count on it – Catholicism is like herpes – it lies fallow but the infection lies deep.
I do like the phrase “any circumstances”. It allows ones imagination free rein.
So … I need to find
– some reproductive and abdominal doctors with … negotiable … ethics ;
– a source of human embryos (subporn someone at a fertility clinic) ;
– for added effect, make it an Islamic-majority and non-white-majority fertility clinic ;
– a supply of hormones (indicated by the ethically-negotiable doctors) to encourage development and implantation of of a human foetus ectopically on the male bowel
– some Italian-speaking muscle guys.
So, you can see the general plan already – to kidnap a man in Italy, forcibly get him pregnant ; hold him until the pregnancy is well eastablished ; then release him into the “care” of the Catholic Church, since they won’t, under any circumstances, permit an abortion.
I wonder how Pope Wossname (Frankie?) would feel about this dilemma? Would the feeling of the baby kicking in his abdomen trigger maternal feelings? Or would the morning sickness trigger “get it out of me” feelings (I see the “chestburster” scene in ‘Alien’)?
Ha, ha, but serious : there’s a screenplay in there, struggling to get out! Pope Joan, anyone? Has anyone seen significance that “Francis” is a gender-neutral name?
😀
If only.
BTW, Francis is the male version, Frances the female.
You mean there’s more than one? Mon dieu — qui savait?
b&
Dieu forbid…
I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen ambiguous spellings in Britain. Then again, at least one of the examples I’m thinking of adds [ahemm] an additional layer of ambiguity. And a lot of slap.
My major concern is this: Are we going to be asked to remove blasphemy only to replace it with the even worse version of inciting religious hatred instead?
Something that could have a very broad interpretation, remember freedom of speech in Ireland isn’t quite the same as the states and jurisprudence tends to favour the person who makes a complaint rather than the idea of fair comment ie pantigate.
We’re not getting to remove the preamble to the Irish constitution nor are we getting to remove the oath of office for the president which is also used for the council of state and Judges.
Any idea of what the wording will be? hopefully straight forward removal
Wait… the alternative to having blasphemy laws is establishing religious hatred?
It seems to me that blasphemy laws ARE an implementation of religious bigotry (call it hatred if you wish).